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NY Doctor Recently Back From West Africa Tests Positive For Ebola
An anonymous reader writes An emergency room doctor who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. It's the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation. From the article: "The doctor, identified as Craig Spencer, 33, came back from treating Ebola patients in Guinea about 10 days ago, and developed a fever, nausea, pain and fatigue Wednesday night. The physician, employed at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, has been in isolation at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan since Thursday morning, the official said."
IMHO, either Ebola is easier to transmit than we are being told _OR_ these Ebola doctors who get the disease are FSKING IDIOTS
if it is so damn hard to get, how the hell do Doctors who should be the best at following procedure can get?
i think people are just morons, no matter what degrees they have
The only people telling you that Ebola is hard to transmit are the ones that want you to stay calm so that you are easier to control.
Most viruses (even HIV) have low transmission rates (below 30%) when the virus is exposed into the body. Relative to other viruses, Ebola seems to have an exceptionally high transmission efficiency. So if you perform any protocol wrong, you will likely contract it.
Ebola is impossible to catch unless you are directly exposed to someone who is symptomatic. That is why the people treating the victims wear the space suits. The reason those not directly exposed don't need to worry is that the virus dies within an hour or two of leaving the victim's body, I suppose when it dries out. The flu virus on the other hand can survive for days or weeks on a door handle or on dust particles in the air.
I'm still trying to figure out what it has to do with politics.
There is a huge difference between being in a room with someone with early stages of ebola for a few minutes and working in a hospital. Here are some factors when working in a hospital with ebola patients;
1. Much longer contact periods. Many health workers in Africa work 18 hour days.
2. Much closer contact. Health workers touch ebola patients much more often than the general public.
3. Contact later in the disease progression. Ebola is transmitted by bodily fluids. As the disease progresses more bodily fluids are secreted, it is a hemorrhagic disease, and more pathogen is present in the excretions.
If one works long hours and their suit is covered in ebola laden fluids it is quite probable that a small mistake can cause infection. Even the fatigue factor may cause errors in protocol.
If you bothered to RTFA (I know, the horror), you'd have seen that he was not symptomatic during his subway rides. Ebola is not contagious when it is asymptomatic. As soon as he began feeling ill, he isolated himself. When the symptoms worsened beyond that of a common cold, he contacted the authorities. The probability of him having infected anyone is close to nil.
... get it under control in Liberia/Sierra Leone/Ghana ...
Guinea, not Ghana. Ghana has been unaffected by the outbreak. It is as different as night and day from Guinea. Ghana has four times the GDP, a far higher literacy rate, functional institutions, and a democratic government that answers to the people.
They are screening and putting every returning health care professional on a health watch. The issue is that the incubation period for ebola can be up to 21 days. The doctor in question arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport on October 17 with no symptoms. Symptoms did not show up until this morning when the doctor followed protocol and was hospitalized. The virus may not even have shown up in his blood on October 17. Remember that infection tests look for antibodies not the virus itself. If the virus had not attacked yet there would be no anybodies.
Because bed sheets are soaked in virus laden excretions making them an extreme hazard and anyone handling them is at risk. Ebols is a hemorrhagic disease which means lots of fluids escaping especially in the later stages of the disease. Also when bed sheets are removed from the bed they are usually crumpled in a ball which creates areas that take a very long time to dry. It is much easier and safer to just burn them.
Some types of mutation are fantastically unlikely - by one account, Ebola would have to mutate into a form that only weighs about 20% or even 10% of what it now does, change from a long, twisted rod to something more like a sphere, and switch the conditions it actually grows under from inside the bloodstream to in the alveolar structures of the lungs to become the sort of threat some people are worried about. There are big differences between viruses frequently mutating and that mutation leading to fast evolutionary selection, but I've tried to explain that on Slashdot too many times to keep hammering at that particular type of ignorance - some people just need to sit down and read a whole good college textbook on Evolution. It may be somewhat reasonable to worry that some mutation in the direction of drug resistance is likely, especially if we don't get this strain under control quickly, but some people are basically describing having a smallish frilled lizard sneak into the country on a piece of driftwood, and six months later, it's stomping buildings flat and breathing radioactive plasma on Mothra, and those same people are too busy spreading rumors to learn anything at all. As they panic at the drop of a hat, people who are actual experts (and not just armchair biology hackers like me) are getting very afraid to say anything at all, because when they give an honest answer that sholdn't cause panic, and might even be a bit reassuring, they expect to be misquoted as saying Ebola will make the Nemesis black hole wander into the inner solar system early and reverse all our magnetic poles, and Raptor riding Jesus will come back and eat our heads, so panic now and avoid the rush!!!
Who is John Cabal?
Let me quote the article for you:
"He had been checking his temperature twice a day."
"Doctors Without Borders confirmed that the physician recently returned from West Africa and was "engaged in regular health monitoring.""
The dude, being a doctor and all, monitored his temperature and most likely checked himself in to the hospital once he developed symptoms.
It has been stated time and time again, that it's virtually impossible to contract the disease from someone that exhibits no symptoms.
You can find more about what Nigeria has done here:
http://www.latimes.com/world/a...
Nothing they did was especially innovative. Their response was textbook. You quarantine anyone infected, you question anyone infected about everyone they've come in contact with, you investigate all of those people, and you do not take the virus lightly.
None of this is new. It is basic.
The people saying we can't have screening or quarantine procedures for political reasons don't seem to grasp that viruses don't care about your politics. It is like when Achilles says to Hector "there are no pacts between lions and men"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The virus will show no pity, no hesitation, and no remorse. It exists to eat and spread.
Just as we have procedures for dealing with forest fires or other natural phenomenon. You don't let politics dictate how you deal with them. There is a correct way and an incorrect way. If you choose the incorrect path because it is politically more correct, then that natural phenomenon will exploit your arrogance and do what it does.
Again, I'm not worried about an outbreak in the US. I am however concerned about the glaring and obvious incompetence of the government. I am routinely shocked by how stupid they are on so many issues.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yep, that's all true, but there are other options, possibly no less scary.
This virus is well established in humans now in this outbreak, whereas before it was mostly a zoonosis (caught from animals). Mutations will now be being selected by their efficacy in prospering in us, not in the original host(s).
Some scientists believe this is already happening, we know it is mutating and there is evidence that it is mutating to become more infectious, to us: http://www.businessinsider.in/...
If it is true that viral loads are coming up earlier and higher than before, then it could be shedding before symptoms. Wouldn't be entirely surprising - containing it through hazmat-after-symptoms will probably select for strains that infect before symptoms. That would screw up all our containment measures rather well. Even if it just accelerates symptoms it could get a lot harder to contain - if first symptoms are a fever _and_ the infected is monitoring and gets themselves straight into care, further infection can be limited, but if first symptoms are fever and projectile vomiting you have much more of a problem.
All that said, scariest thing to me is that this is an African zoonosis that hasn't been out of Africa before except in the lab. We have no idea what hosts it may find in the non-African animal population, should it get the opportunity. If it finds an easy first-world reservoir host (maybe it likes our bats, or our foxes, or our rats) then it will become endemic, rapidly. Endemic ebola (in the absence of vaccine or cure) will be a game changer for 1st world medicine - think about every fever case to be isolated and treated using hazmat until tested negative (probably twice X days apart). Africa's health system, such as it is, is already feeling that pain - Ebola may well kill (already) more people via malaria than it does directly: http://www.reuters.com/article...
I wish people wouldn't keep saying this. It is not virtually impossible to catch before someone becomes symptomatic. From what I gather it is only that the virual load of the individual is much much higher in later stages. The virus is still very more often than not for example detectable in sweat before symptoms set it. It's like telling someone that is allergic to bees not to worry about a few flying around in the bus with them because it's so unlikely they will be stung.. it is a perfectly reasonable concern no matter now many statistics you could cite about how often a bee encounter results in a sting.